


Tick Tock

by Tabi_essentially



Series: Wartime verse [11]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Domestic, M/M, Marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 19:28:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6437308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabi_essentially/pseuds/Tabi_essentially
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The "safe house" on Autumn Road that Arthur and Eames bought before getting married needs a little work. So does the antique clock that Arthur finds in the attic. So does their life together. Making it official is one thing, but settling into a shared space is a bit more of a work in progress.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tick Tock

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, it's been a while since I've been in this 'verse, and it is so strange to revisit it! I've really missed it.
> 
> This story was a request from [Fanfichasruinedmylife](http://fanfichasruinedmylife.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr, as part of my [prompt request](http://la-belle-laide.tumblr.com/post/140813596664/fic-auction-for-my-dog). Her prompt was:
> 
> 'I like the house you gave them in "Autumn Road." I'd love to see some of what they did as they worked to make that place their home.'
> 
> Well, that sounded like a lot of fun, and this was the result. THANK YOU SO MUCH for this request. It means the world! :D 
> 
> That link up there is still open. So if you feel like it, hit me up! :D I've got a few fandoms in there.
> 
> ** ** ** **

“There's so much shit in the chimney,” Arthur said over Skype.

“ _Shit_ shit, or just masses of shite?”

“I don't know, probably both. I think we need to call someone in.”

_We._ Eames wasn't at the house, hadn't been in about two months, between his last two jobs. He was in a nice enough hotel in France. Eames loved hotels, felt comfortable in them, like he belonged there in those anonymous rooms. Tonight, though, he yearned to be someplace with character, lived in. 

For that matter, Arthur wasn't at the house either, from what Eames could discern of his background on the webcam. It looked like his Bronx apartment, the one Eames rarely saw. But the big blue house belonged to both of them, so if Arthur needed to call in a chimney sweep like in Mary Poppins to clean shit—metaphoric and literal—out of it, then by god, Eames was involved in the decision, too.

“Well, I suppose we are on the grid by now after all,” he said. 

Arthur looked down, the high contrast of his webcam defining the tired lines around his eyes. “I mean, it's not like the house is under our real names. And we have Netflix and Prime, so, you know. The place on the map. I doubt anyone from dreamshare or from the government is going to come and clean out the chimney and realize that we live there.”

“No, of course,” Eames said. “I am all for cleaning the chimney. It would be nice to have a fire in the hearth at some point, and not die of carbon monoxide poisoning.”

Arthur gave a short, tired laugh. Next time, they would Skype during Arthur's normal waking hours, in the middle of Eames's night. Bloody time zones. “Speaking of carbon monoxide, I installed those alarms. Smoke alarms, too. And I think I'm gonna sand the floors.”

“Why?” Eames asked.

“Because that's what you do with hardwood floors, Eames, you sand them to get the scratches out. Hang on a sec.” He looked away from the webcam, down at something in his hand – probably his phone. 

Something about the planes of Arthur's face as he looked away from the camera—the high-contrast curve of his lip, perhaps—struck such a deep melancholy in Eames that it startled him. It almost felt like panic. _This will end. One day, all I'll have is photographs and videos left behind._

The out-of-the-blue thought made him want to reach through the computer screen, shake Arthur by the scruff of his silk pajamas and order him to look after himself. To somehow ensure his eternal safety.

Ridiculous.

“It's Ariadne,” Arthur said, looking back up. “She has this job in... Eames? You all right?”

“Yes, darling,” Eames said. “Just tired. This job, it's tedious, you know.”

“Mmm.” Arthur sounded unconvinced. 

“What's Ariadne's job?”

Arthur glanced at his phone again. “I don't have the details yet. She says it'll be quick. Undercover, though.”

“Does she need a forger?”

And there was Arthur's knowing smile. “I don't know yet. I need one, though. To help me sand the floors when it's done.” 

That was probably more for Eames's benefit than Arthur's, but... maybe not.

“Right.” Eames sighed, feigning disinterest because Arthur expected him to. “Get your bloody sandblaster or whatever it is you need, and I promise you, on your return and mine, we'll buff them to a slick and deadly sheen. Never again will you have a splinter in your arse.”

“ _Sandblaster,_ ” Arthur scoffed. “And why is it my ass on the floor?”

“Because that's what I'm picturing.”

Arthur huffed out a laugh. “While I'd love to Skype-sex you, I'm actually half asleep right now.”

“Right. I'll let you off the hook this time. When is Ariadne's thing over?”

“I have no idea. She's rarely on one job for more than a week, though.”

“Mine's a tad longer than that. I'll come up the moment we wrap it up.”

“Hope to see you,” Arthur said. “I, uhh... I miss you a lot.”

Out of sight of his webcam, Eames rubbed at his ring-finger. He'd never worn the ring long enough to leave an indentation or tan around it – too dangerous. “I miss you, too, love.”

That got him a small, secret smile, the one no one else saw. “Good night, Mr. Eames.”

“Good night, Arthur.”

 

** ** ** **

 

Two weeks later, Arthur was putting the cover on a small can of white paint, after touching up the upstairs window sill, when he heard a key rattling in the front door.

Obviously it was Eames. Most likely. Arthur hadn't been expecting him so soon after wrapping up Ariadne's (relatively easy) job, but there was no one else it could be. Still, he grabbed his Glock and stood atop the balcony stairs. The Glock wasn't loaded, but how cool would it be if he jumped down off this balcony? He'd done higher jumps than this before. Hell, he'd jumped out of a window across an alleyway once. That was a long time ago, and his knees gave a twinge these days when he pulled stunts like that. But still. He could probably do it. 

As soon as Eames was in sight, he jumped, and landed in a crouch. And, shit, it jarred his ankles and knees in a way he hadn't expected. It really had been a while since he'd jumped from that kind of height, but it was worth it to see the look on Eames's face: startled, annoyed, impressed.

“I nearly shot you,” Arthur said, rising from his crouch. He kept it smooth, didn't wince. 

“Yes, hello, I've missed you, too,” Eames said. And if Eames had noticed that he rose a little slower than he used to, he didn't mention it. He stared, instead, at Arthur's hands – dry, cracked, and with flecks of white paint still on them. But that wasn't what Eames was looking at.

Arthur toyed with his ring, and smiled, forgetting his irritation. Eames pulled him in for an unexpected kiss.

Although, nothing was exactly unexpected anymore, a fact which alternately alarmed and comforted Arthur. Sometimes it felt like a story he'd already read, long ago. Perhaps he'd forgotten some of the details, and maybe he'd even forgotten a major plot point here and there, but the story itself was familiar. _Eames_ was familiar.

Eames let him go, giving him that intense, fierce look that others usually mistook for anger. He reached out with the back of his hand, and just barely ran his fingers over Arthur's hair. And Arthur got it, what that look was all about, because he was feeling the same thing. He'd been down this road before.

But they had promised each other one thing, something greater than any vow of fidelity: Even if they ever became convinced their life together was a dream, neither of them would try to wake up. At least they would be together.

“I suppose I should put mine on,” Eames said, pulling his hand away.

“What?”

“My ring.”

“Oh. Yes. Yeah, go put it on. Uhh. I'm going to take a quick shower. I'm all dusty.”

“Right. I'm dusty, too.” Finally, there was that look in his eyes: levity, fondness.

“Yeah, I'll bet,” Arthur said. “I'll meet you in there.”

Later, after the shower, (Eames had pinned him with his body and with his eyes; Arthur was used to both,) there came that feeling that Arthur had tried to fight for so long before giving up: the unnerving comfort of being settled. That feeling of something unwinding in his chest, the ability to breathe deeper. This part, he still wasn't used to. Eames casting around in the fridge for something he liked. Checking his phone once in a while as he threw together a quick meal out of whatever Arthur had stocked up (griping about not having enough fresh food, about needing to go to the market tomorrow,) and chatting amiably about his last job, the forgery he had done. This feeling of being completely at ease – it was still strange.

Arthur sat up on the counter while he ate a sandwich; sitting at the dinner table like a normal human being would have compounded that domestic feeling. Eames, sitting at the table, eyed him like he knew what time it was.

“Umm,” Arthur said, by way of changing the subject that neither of them was bringing up, “I kind of fucked up the floor by the sofa. With the sanding.”

“Mm,” Eames said, sipping at the soup he had made with frozen vegetables. “I had noticed.”

Arthur grimaced. He didn't think it was _that_ bad. But Eames was all about details. “I might have over-sanded.”

“You're too enthusiastic with your tools,” Eames said.

“I've never had any complaints.”

“Well, no matter. Actually, I've got something in the car that might help.”

Arthur wasn't sure what that could be, and Eames turned reticent as they finished their meager dinner. Maybe it really was time to keep the fridge stocked better. After cleaning up, they went out to Eames's car together. It was cold for March, and up here, it stayed cold well into Spring. Arthur wore a jacket, but Eames didn't bother. From the trunk of his car, he hefted out a heavy area rug and threw it over his shoulder. 

“Um,” Arthur said, as he followed Eames in. He couldn't see the design on it.

Once inside, Eames moved the coffee table, unrolled the rug, and set it down to cover the over-sanded floor. It smelled of old wood and slightly of lavender. The rug, which was black and grey, and obviously hand-made, was nothing close to what Arthur had had in mind. Eames straightened the rug—weirdly, the perfect size—and moved the table back. “There we are,” he said. “What do you think?”

What Arthur thought was that he really loved wood floors, that it had never been his intention to cover them, and that he was disappointed. What Arthur thought was, ' _No, don't say any of that,_ ' and ' _That's from his home in Mombasa and he wants to have it here._ ' And finally, ' _But don't oversell it._ ' 

What Arthur said was, “Yeah, that looks good,” and then quickly changed the subject. “You know what we should do next?”

“Take a cruise somewhere tropical?” Eames said.

“That's actually the worst idea you've ever had,” Arthur said, remembering the two of them stuck on a train in the middle of Siberia, on an ill-fated “vacation.”

“Hmm,” Eames said, “yes, true. All right, what should we do?”

“We need to tackle the attic.”

A small flicker of horror in Eames's eyes at that suggestion, one that Arthur had expected, and maybe he'd just wanted to test him a little. Eames had run across the top of that moving train in Siberia, but one fat, juicy spider was enough to give him a shudder.

“I've got a better idea,” Eames said, and Arthur smiled. “Have you had that chimney sweep round yet?”

“Yup.”

“Well, as it's freezing up here, why don't we have a fire? Tomorrow, I'll chop wood while you 'tackle the attic' or whatever it is you want to do up there.”

“'Chop wood?' What are you going to do, fell a tree? You're a lumberjack all of a sudden?”

Eames let out a long-suffering sigh. “It might have slipped your mind, but there are already trees down, right at the foot of the mountain. We could use it for firewood.”

“They've been covered in snow for months; the wood's all wet,” Arthur said.

“I do actually know how to strip damp wood.”

“Yeah, that's the rumor,” Arthur said, because how could he not, when Eames practically invited it. 

“How does a twelve year old afford all of those bespoke suits?” Eames said.

“We could _buy_ firewood, Riley's sell cords of it--” Arthur stopped, sighed. “No, actually, you're right. That's a good idea. Just don't, I don't know, get attacked by a bear.”

“The only one likely to get attacked by a bear around here is you, Arthur.”

“Now who's twelve?” He could never bring up anything about bears without Eames making that joke.

“And don't you get attacked by... by bats or squirrels or whatever else might be living in our attic,” Eames said. “They have rabies, you know.”

“I got a rabies shot,” Arthur said.

Eames laughed a little, then stopped when he realized Arthur was serious. “You've become a country boy.”

“Yeah, _I_ have,” Arthur said. “Go strip your damp wood, Eames.”

“Tomorrow,” Eames said. “Tonight, I think we've better things to do.”

Arthur gave him the smile, and the slow blink that always got him going.

“You said we have Netflix and Prime?” Eames said.

“...Yes?”

“Excellent.”He went to his go-bag, which he had left beside the front door, and pulled out a pair of thick slippers. “Was that ice cream I saw in the freezer?” 

 

** ** ** **

 

The next afternoon, after a trip to Riley's Market (and the grocery store, like normal people, Arthur had insisted,) Arthur fitted a paper mask over his nose and mouth, and pulled down the stairs to the attic, at the end of the upstairs hallway. The dust fell into his eyes immediately when the stairs came down. He probably should have brought goggles too; this was going to be murder on his allergies. But he took his flashlight and made his way up the creaking stairs. In his other hand he held a lightbulb. There was a Western window, but the day was overcast, and it didn't offer enough light for him to get a good look around. It was cold up here, but not unbearable. He cast the light around, looking for a socket, and the switch. He found them, screwed in the bulb, and turned it on.

Attics were cool in general, but he particularly liked this one. And, yes, he could see evidence of rodent nests all over, and of course there were spiderwebs and cobwebs, but he wasn't bothered by that kind of thing. The beams were still solid, and the floors were surprisingly strong. He stamped his foot, testing them for cracks and weak spots. He found none. 

The attic was hardly bare. The chimney came up through here on the Northern side—it looked sturdy enough--and most of the rest of the floor was covered in boxes wrapped in plastic, melancholy remnants of other lives lived in this home. 

But the best—okay, maybe not best, but oddest—thing in the attic stood against the Eastern wall, opposite the Western window: a vintage, or maybe even antique grandfather clock. It was overcast now, but he imagined how the sun would illuminate this clock through the dust motes in late afternoon. The hands were stuck at 2:20. What had been going on when the clock had stopped, and never started again? When whoever had owned it last had just quit winding it? Eames might have been able to come up with some kind of narrative on the spot. Arthur could only wonder.

He stared at it, imagining it ticking away some other person's life, chiming out someone else's hours – sunrise, lunchtime, supper, bed time. Until it had stopped, and whoever had owned it had just brought it up here. Or maybe it had been brought up after the death of the previous owner. He'd never researched any of the other families that had owned this house. It might be fun to look into that, if he had time.

He stared at the clock, and then, suddenly, he wasn't staring at it. He was standing at the window, watching Eames as he split logs. The clouds broke over the pines and oaks that lined the foot of the mountain, and the sun cast long tree-shadows over Eames as he brought the ax down on a log, splitting it in two. Eames glanced up at the window and caught him staring. He set the ax down and waved.

Arthur jumped, spine tingling. He gripped the dusty, split windowsill with one hand, scrubbed at his eyes with the other. The mask over his face became stifling; he yanked it off. He turned back to the clock, expecting the hands to have moved. He didn't know if it was better or worse that they were still stuck on 2:20. He checked his watch. 4:40. He hadn't checked the time when he'd first come up, but it certainly hadn't been that long ago; maybe 3:30 or so.

How had he lost an entire hour? What the fuck had he been doing up here? Staring out the window the whole time? How many times had Eames looked up and seen him standing there, doing nothing? With horror, he wondered what else he could have been doing. Zoning out? Some creepy, repetitive motion thing? 

He reached into his front pocket and took out his die, rolled it three times. It landed on three, each time.

But he had rolled this die before, and somewhere along the way, it had stopped convincing him. He checked the clock again. 

Why 2:20? What would happen if he moved the hands? Only one way to find out. He walked over the creaking floors to the clock, and moved the minute-hand down to 2:30. Nothing happened. He moved it to 2:40. Again, nothing. Arthur ran a finger down the dusty face of the clock, leaving a clean streak. He tapped the wooden body, and waited to see if anything changed. Nothing did.

The sounds of the back door opening, followed by Eames's hurried footsteps coming up the stairs, alarmed him. What would he say? The truth was the only option. At this point, what good was keeping secrets?

 

** ** ** **

 

Eames felt eyes on him, looked up to the window, and saw Arthur staring.

Arthur stared at him a lot. There was nothing unusual about the feeling of his eyes at Eames's back, or his front, or really anywhere. But when Eames looked up to that attic window and saw Arthur standing there, a creepy fucking dust mask over his face, it made his neck prickle. He waved. Arthur did not wave back. Instead, he ripped the mask off his face and disappeared from the window.

Right. That was weird. Eames dropped the ax and went inside in a hurry.

The attic stairs in the hall were down, and light came down from the opening; Arthur had installed a light, at least. Eames charged up the stairs, spiders and bats be damned. 

When he got there, Arthur at least appeared to have collected himself. He was fiddling with some old clock he'd found against the wall.

“What is it?” Eames asked.

“Umm.” Arthur clearly thought about telling him it was nothing. He saw it in his eyes. Then he scrubbed his hand over his face and said, “I don't know. I lost time, I... I couldn't remember how I got here. Not _here_ , not to the house but, to the window for a few minutes. I was looking at this clock, and then I wasn't.”

A frisson of panic ran up his spine. The panic was useless; he banished it and approached Arthur, who darted his eyes away, like he was ashamed to admit this. 

“Well, all right,” Eames said. “There are a few options at play here. Let's start with the simplest: You're overworked. You had a moment.” He didn't quite believe that one, but it was possible.

Arthur gave a nervous little laugh. “I'm hardly overworked, Eames.”

“Right, well, then there's Somnacin reactions. That job you just came off of, with Ariadne. New chemist?”

“Uhh, yes. Yeah, a new chemist. But the compounds checked out.”

“Are you a chemist?”

“I think I know enough about...”

“What was in it?” Eames challenged. “Go on, then. List off the chemicals.”

Arthur rolled his eyes. “Come on, Eames, you know I don't... I've been doing this for years, I know a bad compound when I run into one.”

“Perhaps, but it is also a known fact that overuse of the Somnacin compounds can cause short term memory loss, now and then. It has happened before, you know. To me, too.” He didn't know who if he was trying to convince Arthur, or himself. It wasn't by any stretch of the imagination the first time either of them had run into trouble with Somnacin. If this question hadn't already come up before between them, Eames would have no doubt that it was just a reaction to a compound. 

“I know,” Arthur said. 

“Final option,” Eames said. He nodded towards the clock. “We're in a dream and this is someone else's totem.”

Arthur's eyebrows went up. He opened his mouth to say something, shut it again, and looked at the clock, considering it. “Hmm,” he said. 

“And why is that the least alarming option, out of all that I listed?”

“It's not the least alarming,” Arthur said. “It's just one that I hadn't considered. I mean, a dream, yeah, we both talked about that. But someone else's totem? That's different. I don't think we're in danger.” He inflected it like a question at the end.

Eames came to stand beside him, in front of the clock. The hands stood at 2:40. “No. I don't think so.”

Arthur took a deep breath, exhaled, and let his shoulder drop. “We already decided. If we start to think we're in a dream...”

“Then it's not so bad. We stay until we wake up.”

“Yeah.”

They were silent. Something scurried in the corner. They both heard it, but neither made a move to see what it was.

“Did you move the hands?” Eames asked.

“Yeah. They were on 2:20.”

“Right.” Eames paced the creaking floors and thought for a moment. “Right, so, first of all, let's just go with the second option for now. This means nothing other than a delayed reaction to your last job.”

Arthur started to say something. 

Eames held up a hand. “If it happens again, or if it happens to me, then we'll have to look further into it. And decide what to do.”

“And if the clock changes back?” Arthur said.

“If it changes to 2:30, that's nothing. The minute-hand would simply be loose. If it changes back to 2:20, then we'll...”

“Take action?”

“No. I don't know.”

“We'll stay,” Arthur said. 

When Eames turned again to look at him, there was fire in his eyes. 

“We'll stay,” Arthur said again. “We decided. I'm... I'm not unhappy here. We're not like Dom and Mal. We're not gonna wake up crazy. Look at Saito, he was in limbo for decades, and he's fine. It doesn't happen to everyone. We just... we never, ever end our own lives, or dream, or whatever it is. Not in this life and, if we do wake up from this, then not in the next, either.”

“What if someone is in the dream, swindling us?”

“Then we'd deal with it when we woke up naturally. And also, we just fucked with their totem. If this whole thing was a dream, we'd only lose a few days' time. That's not so bad.”

“No,” Eames said. “No, it's not so bad.”

 

** ** ** **

 

Arthur really wanted to go through those boxes in the attic, clock or not. And he'd be damned if he was going to let an antique clock scare him out of an entire space in his own home. The next morning, while Eames was still in the shower, Arthur grabbed a coffee and a piece of toast for breakfast, slipped another dust mask over his face, and headed back up the stairs. Once up, he took a pair of work gloves out of his pocket and put them on. He might kid Eames a lot about his fear of spiders, but the brown recluse was actually a thing.

The clock still stood at 2:40, and a sense of relief washed over him. He'd already made the decision to stay no matter what, but it was nice, at least, not to have glaring evidence of someone else's totem staring him in the face. 

Arthur knelt on the splintered floor and pulled one of the boxes to him. He heard the bathroom door close downstairs, and Eames walking around.

“Arthur?” Eames called.

“Up here,” Arthur yelled down.

Eames probably grumbled something, but Arthur didn't hear it. He opened the box and pulled out some musty old clothes, wrapped in plastic. Neon shit, like from the 80s. Nothing as interesting as he had hoped, but he did wonder about the people who had discarded this stuff. It made him feel sad to think that, someday, someone else would come up into this attic, and maybe find some of his and Eames's old junk stored away. These new people would be living their lives and he would simply be gone; his present, his Now, over. A part of someone else's story.

The next box held much of the same. The one after that was a little better: it had some old books. These, at least, he could dust off and put on shelves, if they were any good.

Which inspired in him another idea: one of those empty rooms downstairs should really be a library. Eames would love that. 

A moment later, he heard Eames coming down the hall, and then thumping up the attic stairs. Only his eyes were visible over whatever weird thing he had over his face. A mask, like his own, he realized – only Eames had drawn on his. Over the mouth were four vertical lines, like prison bars, and he'd drawn two holes over the nostrils.

“Don't you feel eyes moving over your body, Clarice?” Eames asked, his voice a perfect imitation of Anthony Hopkins's evil purr. 

Arthur had nothing to say to that, so he rolled his eyes, smiling behind his mask, and went back to his books.

“I thought you weren't coming up here,” he said. “Because of the rats and the rabies or whatever.”

“I changed my mind,” Eames said. He, too, looked at the clock. And then back at Arthur, as if the answer didn't matter anyway. “What've you got there?”

Arthur held up one of the books – a book so old it just about fell apart in his hands. The cover read: “Greenhouse Flowers And Management.” 

“Old books?” Eames sounded delighted.

“Some of them, looks like,” Arthur said. 

Eames came over and joined him on the floor, but he still let Arthur, with his gloves, dig through the box.

“It kind of got me thinking,” Arthur said. “It might be cool to use that Western room downstairs and, I don't know, put up some shelves and put a lot of books in there. You know? And a desk or something.”

“An office?”

“A library.” The next idea came to him, and was out of his mouth before he even finished forming it. “I want to fix that clock. And put it in there, too.”

Eames looked up at it again with narrowed eyes. “Fix it?”

“Yeah. It's a really cool clock. I looked it up on the internet. I think I can figure out how to make it work. Then I could polish it up, make it look really nice. And then we won't even have to think about it sitting up here, going back to 2:20 or whatever. If it's someone else's totem, fuck them. We make it ours.”

Eames stroked his mask, thoughtful. “Well... Yes, I suppose it makes sense. I do like antiques. And, if we are in someone's dream, then a move like that would throw them off.”

“Exactly.”

He saw the smile in Eames's eyes. “Well then, let me help you get it down the stairs.”

 

** ** ** **

 

Those fingers of Arthur's, the same ones that were so adept at tinkering with the rusted inner workings of antique clocks – and that brain of his, that could figure out the gears and wheels to get the clock up and running... Okay, maybe Arthur had googled it. But he'd still done it. That brain was a turn on. So were those fingers, and so was the rest of Arthur, who was currently pinning him to the sofa, in the living room which now smelled like the fire in the hearth, and the rug he'd brought up from Mombasa. 

Eames hadn't missed all the thoughts that had flown across Arthur's features when he'd brought that rug in. Maybe that had been a kind of test, just to see how far the “our” went in “our house.” Eames shouldn't have doubted him.

The fire cracked and popped in the newly-clean fireplace. The wood wasn't as dry as it should have been, (he hadn't stripped his damp wood as well as he could have,) and the fire was listless. Still, it took the bite out of the March chill.

Those clever fingers on his chest, and the rest of Arthur, started traveling south, and Eames really liked where this was going--...

*BONG* said the clock from the room down the hall. *BONG*

Arthur ignored it, but the damned thing went on.

“Ugh,” Eames groaned. “How many more times is it going to do that?”

Arthur glanced at his watch (who the fuck wore a watch stark naked and right before sex? Or at all, really?) “Probably another eight times, since it's midnight,” Arthur said.

*BONG*

“Seven times,” Arthur said. 

Eames dramatically threw his arm over his eyes and sighed.

Arthur crawled up, crossed his arms on Eames's chest and rested his chin on them. “Does it bother you that much?”

What Eames thought was: _Yes, it's bloody awful, all that racket every hour,_ followed by the realization that the clock somehow comforted Arthur, maybe in the same way that having his rug from Mombasa comforted him. Never before had Eames made the decision to share space with another person for so long; not in dreams, and not in reality. A noisy clock seemed a small price to pay for his time with Arthur.

So what he said was, “Nah, it's all right. Carry on.”

Arthur carried on. The clock struck midnight.

 

** ** ** **


End file.
